


Written in Bone, Unraveled by Blood

by Catallii



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, M/M, nothing too graphic but like. it IS bloodborne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25226809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catallii/pseuds/Catallii
Summary: Javert is on the trail of a mystery, determined to find out what’s happened to this city – why it's tearing itself apart piece by piece. Valjean just wants to find a way out of this place. Little do they know both paths will lead them to the same destination, and to secrets deeper than they could ever imagine.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Written in Bone, Unraveled by Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Wa-hey, it's time for a Les Mis Bloodborne AU! (Yes you read that right, no I don't know what I was thinking either.) And I can't even say no-one asked for it because multiple people did, in fact, ask! Big thanks to all my discord friendos for all your encouragement and feedback; this definitely would not have gotten done without you.
> 
> anyways please enjoy the 11k words I wrote entirely and exclusively as an elaborate setup for an extremely corny pun!

The moon hangs low in the sky, and with a snarl, Inspector Javert throws the hound off him and drives his saw cleaver through its spine. 

That’s the third one already. With a sound of disgust, he flicks the mingled blood and drool off his hand. His gloves caught the worst of it, but if this keeps up, he’ll need a new pair soon. When the man told him the Hunt was on, he’d imagined something more… organised. Not packs of feral, half-starved dogs roaming the streets. Some of them, he thinks, look like they shouldn’t be alive, more open sore than fur and skin.

There is something wrong with this city.

His original plan was to leave directly after the blood ministration, but he’s never been good at letting a mystery go once he has it in his jaws. The citizens bar their doors, nobody dares speak above a whisper; the ones that are out on the street attack anything in sight, flailing wildly with their homemade weapons and crude shields. They seem half on their way to being beasts themselves. Posture all wrong, arms too long. Eyes that glow eerily in the dark, and screams that sound too ragged for a human throat. He’s yet to see another sane soul. Nothing but beasts, and madmen, and the smell of charnel in the air. There is something wrong with this city, and he intends to find out what.

 _Seek paleblood to transcend the Hunt,_ the barely-legible note said; _go to the Healing Church for blood,_ the man behind the window instructed him. So Javert goes.

He rounds a corner and stops short; there’s someone standing at the railing, looking out over the tortuous skyline. Unlike the other men, this one stands perfectly upright and does not sway. His back and shoulders are broad under his coat, but the collar is turned high and his scarf hides most of his face. His hair, snow-white, almost seems to glow in the moonlight. The man, as though sensing Javert’s eyes on him, turns slightly, and Javert tightens his hold on the handle of his weapon. The other man makes no move to attack, however, and so after a moment he eases his grip.

He still approaches cautiously. There’s no sense in being overeager. Far off, some animal wails into the night – or perhaps it’s a human. There’s been little enough difference in the sounds they make as they lunge for him; as he cuts them down.

“Are you from this city?” he asks, staying a healthy distance away. He can feel the weight of the man’s gaze on him, though with his own hat pulled low, Javert knows he won’t be able to distinguish much in the gloom. A moment passes, long enough for Javert to wonder if he understands speech, when the man responds.

“No,” he says, hardly above a whisper.

More’s the pity. He was hoping to find someone who might know exactly what’s going on here, why the city appears to have pitched headlong into anarchy. Still, he can communicate, and looks strong; there might be an alliance to be had, or failing that, at least some word on the road ahead.

The man turns fully, and his eyes find Javert’s at last, and recognition comes to him in a rush.

 _“You!”_ he exclaims – and then he plunges a hand into his greatcoat, pulling his handcuffs from his pocket. He lunges at Valjean, but the other man is ready: he catches Javert by the shoulders, using his own momentum to throw him off with almost pathetic ease. Javert cries out as he lands on a pile of wooden crates, and they splinter beneath him. He pulls out his pistol as he staggers to his feet, spitting a curse along with the blood, but Valjean is already gone.

He shoves the gun back in its holster, frustrated. That should have been his first move; he should have known Valjean wouldn’t submit without a fight, should have known the man would have recognised him first. Valjean’s always had him trailing one step behind.

Still, what are the odds the _bagnard_ he’s been chasing for over a decade would show up here, in this city, of all places?

The question scratches at the back of Javert’s mind. Is it coincidence? Did he choose the city as his hiding place? Or does he know of Yharnam’s fame as well?

Could they be here for similar purposes?

He almost decides to give up on his search for answers in favour of new prey, but he knows Valjean well enough to know that, now the fox has the hound’s scent, he won’t be seen again. Another opportunity lost.  
  
  


It’s an ugly thing, taking a life. This one was the ugliest yet.

Valjean falls to his knees as the clergyman-turned-monster gives one last, aching wail, and finally dies.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he gasps, fingers digging furrows into the soft earth of the graveyard, not knowing who he’s apologising to. The beast who used to be a man, or the little girl behind the window who only wanted her parents back, or God Himself above. If God is even still there, if He hasn’t turned His eye from this city entirely.

 _Pitié, Seigneur,_ he thinks. _Pitié._

“Don’t be,” Eileen breathes haggardly behind him. “He was falling apart. Had to be done.”

  
  
  


The second time Javert finds Valjean in this God-forsaken city it, too, is completely by accident.

He’s running from a pack of Yharnamites that think _he’s_ the beast. Their hollow, sunken stares and mouths full of jagged teeth say otherwise, but of course the same affliction that robs them of their human features also robs them of the ability to see reason. He stopped trying for reason after the fourth or fifth man he’d found out of doors, anyway, and that was so long ago it’s almost funny now.

What’s less funny is what they’ll do to him if they catch him. He knows just what a mob with its blood up can do to any unfortunate that falls in its grasp; he imagines it’s worse if that mob has already been driven mad before working itself into a frenzy. It’s probably worse.

He skids around a corner into an alleyway, already weighing up the various pros and cons of going out fighting versus finding a likely rooftop to fling himself off of – and runs into Valjean. Quite literally. They collide with an ‘oomph!’ sound and Javert doesn’t know if it’s one or the other or both of them that makes it. He staggers back. Valjean reacts before he does.

“This way!”

There’s hands tugging at his coat, spurring him into motion, and then they’re both running for their lives from the madmen and their dogs. They careen down the narrow streets, the clamoring of their pursuers bouncing off the walls of the buildings behind them. Suddenly, Valjean surprises him by crowding them both into a sheltered doorway, out of sight. It’s almost too small to hide both of them properly, and they’re forced into uncomfortably cramped quarters; they’re both winded, and he feels Valjean’s chest heave against his with every breath he takes.

For a moment he’s sure it won’t work, that they’ll be found and torn to shreds – but incredibly, the mob passes them by.

When the last sounds of pursuit have faded, Valjean steps back from him, out into the street.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Javert challenges. He lost his handcuffs along with his old coat – he replaced it after it got set on fire in a particularly nasty fight, and only noticed the absence later – but duty demands he not let that stop him. Valjean merely looks at him askance.

“I am _leaving,_ Javert.”

 _“Bouge pas.”_ He pulls his pistol from its holster, pointing it at the convict.

For a moment Valjean obeys, standing silent and still, regarding him. Then, quite deliberately, he turns his back and starts walking.

Javert adjusts his aim, sights down his arm at that spot between Valjean’s shoulder blades, and cocks his pistol. The click is loud in the silence that has taken over, but though he tenses, still Valjean does not stop. Javert’s finger tightens on the trigger.

He’s sorely tempted to make good on the threat, but he suspects if he does Valjean will simply reawaken in the Hunter’s Dream – as Javert has already, on four separate occasions – and then he will have lost him again. He suspects Valjean knows that, too. It can’t be by chance he’s still around; instinct tells him he’s wrapped up in all this, too.

He should have taken his chances with the mob.

He wonders, as he watches Valjean go, bitter shame and frustration rising in his throat, whether dying will get easier the more he does it.

He finds it doesn’t.

  
  
  


Valjean hauls himself up over the tower’s edge expecting to find himself on the wrong end of the barrel of a gun, and is pleasantly surprised when that proves not to be the case.

For all the man called him Hunter when he set foot in this place, there’s only one Hunter around, and that’s the man currently leaning on the enormous gatling gun, looking at him with a gimlet eye. Valjean wonders if he’ll try to kill him. He wonders if his luck will hold.

“You didn’t kill any of the beasts,” the man says, detaching himself from the gatling gun to move to the center of the rooftop. Perfect positioning for a fight. Valjean feels his heart sink, and prepares himself.

“My business is not with the beasts,” he replies, “but with this tower, and its view. And at any rate, I find running does the trick most of the time.”

It’s not a lie: he’s had to defend himself more than once, but most of the beasts – save for the good Father – are slower than he is, and easily eluded. He’s only killed when he’s forced to, and that, thankfully, hasn’t happened very much at all.

The man harrumphs. “Then you’ve more sense and more heart than any of the others who’ve passed this way.”

He tilts his head towards the edge of the rooftop in invitation, and Valjean steps cautiously closer to look down at the plaza below. The bonfires scattered about are still lit. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he passed by, but they seem intended to burn indefinitely, filling the air with choking ash.

“You see those unsightly beasts down there?”

“Of course.” He can hardly have missed them; his left arm still has three long gashes down it from when one got its claws in him. Not quite fast enough. Valjean edges closer. 

“In case you’ve failed to realise, they’re not beasts. They’re people. They’re hunting people.”

What the man says sounds like madness – or it would, if he hadn’t seen Father Gascoigne turn into a monster with his own eyes. The moment he says those words it all makes a horrifying sort of sense.

“What happened?” he asks, paling, and the man smiles crookedly at him, and Valjean thinks privately to himself that he may be a little mad, after all.

“Ashen blood. The Church. The Hunt. Take your pick. But they keep to themselves, and pose no threat to those above.”

“What can be done for them?”

“Nothing.” The man exhales, slumps back against the sandbags propping up his artillery, and says no more.

Valjean takes the opportunity to look at the view. It’s beautiful, and the moon is bright tonight, but that isn’t why he came. This is the tallest tower in the area, and he’d hoped it might lead him true. But the maze of streets seems to wind on forever, and he can see no exit roads among the piled buildings. There should be a road, he _knows_ he came in on it. Perhaps he’s the one who’s gone mad. If so, he prefers to keep it to himself.

“I will leave this place, then,” he says. After a moment he remembers his manners and adds, “I thank you for not shooting me.”

The other man doesn’t reply – hardly reacts at all – until he’s about to step down onto the ladder. 

“Hunter,” he calls. 

Valjean stops, his hand on the ladder’s railing. “My name is Jean Valjean.” _I am no Hunter,_ he means, but leaves unsaid. The man inclines his head with a low hum.

“Do you dream, Jean Valjean?”

Valjean pauses, and thinks of the pitchfork that pierced his chest, the crunch of bone, the fear and the fading light, waking up in that strange place –

“Yes.”

“Then the next time you dream, give some thought to the Hunt.” The man shoves a hand in his coat, tosses something at him, and Valjean catches it in his cupped hands. A badge.

“I am Djura,” the Hunter says. It’s his only farewell.

  
  
  


The third time, Valjean is the one to find him, and Javert is on the point of exsanguination.

He’s managed to limp his way to safety, but the muscle in his right leg is all torn out, dark blood spurting weakly from the jagged flesh – one of those werewolves, with a hacksaw. He got the better of it in the end, but only just, and not soon enough to matter. All in all, though, it’s a quieter death than he might have expected not five minutes ago. He slumps back against the wall. He has yet to die from blood loss, and he has vague hopes it might not even be all that bad, for all that reawakening in the Dream leaves him feeling curiously hollow every time.

Life seems to want to spit in his face, though, for who should round the corner but the last man he ever wanted to see in this state. Dying with an audience is bad enough. Dying in front of _him_ – he grits his teeth. Well, at least one of them will be entertained, he thinks.

“Javert!” Valjean exclaims, and rushes to him, falling to his knees at his side.

“Leave me be, V—” he cuts off in a wordless cry as Valjean’s hand brushes his knee; the pain makes him black out for a moment, and leaves a ringing in his ears. He doesn’t see Valjean draw the blood vial from inside his coat, doesn’t realise what’s happening until he feels the sting of the syringe plunging into his good leg, followed by the unmistakable sensation of flesh and bone reknitting itself. He gasps and pitches forward, too exhausted and too in pain to keep himself still. Valjean’s hands brace his shoulders. They’re likely the only thing keeping him upright. And then the pain fades, leaving only the familiar, restless itch under his skin, and Javert is whole.

“Never a dull moment in this town,” Valjean says wryly, sitting back on his heels.

Javert grunts and flexes his leg experimentally. The blood vial’s done its job and healed the torn muscle and splintered bone. He still feels light-headed, though. And he can’t begin to grasp why Valjean would bother stepping in to save his life. 

“Do you need another?”

“No. Not unless you want me to be able to chase you.” 

The man rises, and Javert resigns himself to letting him go this time, too. It would be pointless to pursue him; his handcuffs are gone, and Valjean could escape him simply by shooting himself in the head, if it came right down to it. Beyond that, it would be… ungrateful.

Valjean is giving him a considering look. “Javert,” he says slowly.

He realises what’s coming with a sudden rush of horror.

 _“Non,”_ he says immediately, his tone like a door slamming shut.

“We would be much better protected if we were together.”

“The madness in this town will have taken me, if I accept the help of a con.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Valjean replies mildly, “but I believe you already have.”

He snarls wordlessly, and even though he’s still seated Valjean backs up a step, palms raised. There’s silence for a moment, then Valjean opens his mouth again; Javert stifles a groan. His stubbornness is truly beyond compare.

“How many times have you died, Javert?”

… Damn it.

“Seven,” he replies, honestly.

 _Damn_ it.

Valjean extends a hand, and Javert, despite instinct and duty both screaming not to – Javert takes it, and allows Valjean to pull him upright. He sways, but stays on his feet.

“... Yourself?” he asks as they leave together.

“Just the one, so far.”

Knowing Valjean’s inhuman strength, that probably shouldn’t sting his pride as much as it does.

  
  
  


It’s an awkward thing, this partnership, and it grates like bone grinding on bone.

Valjean prefers to flee when he can, but Javert is not quite as nimble as he is, and isn’t as skilled at climbing his way up the nooks and crannies of Yharnam’s architecture. Besides that, two people traveling together will always move slower than one alone.

Javert, on the other hand, seems determined to fight every last beast in sight, whether it’s necessary nor not. Part of Valjean wonders if Javert is deliberately testing him, testing his offer of help by throwing himself into needless fights, trying to make him regret it.

He gives a quiet prayer for patience, and pushes on.

  
  
  


It all comes to a head even faster than Javert expected.

He stands over the corpse of a giant and gives a short, satisfied laugh deep in his throat – and then there’s hands on his shoulders. Valjean grabs him and turns him so they’re nose to nose.

“Enough!” he says, giving him a shake. “Enough! Don’t you know what they are? They’re _people,_ Javert!”

He scoffs. “Of course I know that.”

Valjean’s jaw goes slack in horror; Javert shrugs his hand off, and he lets him. He looks stunned.

“You knew?”

“I’m not _stupid,_ Valjean; it’s obvious the citizens of this town are turning into beasts somehow. It’s the root cause that concerns me. So what if they were human once?” he spits. “Now they are a danger to the people that remain.”

The horror leaves Valjeans face, replaced by scorching anger. For a moment Javert tastes the sea at the back of his tongue, sees the hospital drapes flutter at the edge of his memory – then Valjean turns away, breathing heavily, hands clenching at his sides.

“Can they not be redeemed?” he asks at last, so quietly Javert doubts he was even meant to hear it at all. An odd lump rises in his throat. He doesn’t answer.

Neither of them speaks to the other for a long while, but Javert follows Valjean’s lead in running more often after that. If Valjean notices, he doesn’t say. That suits Javert perfectly.

They enter the Great Cathedral and find a woman.

She’s kneeling in the center of the nave with her back to them, head bowed in prayer, completely alone. The Cathedral doors are heavy, but they were unbarred. If one of the beasts were to slip inside – but no matter. They can guide her to save haven at Odeon Chapel; she will be protected there. Valjean rushes to her side and crouches, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she doesn’t stop her fervent prayer. Whatever it is, she’s chanting it too low for him to make out the words. 

“It’s all right,” he says. He takes her hands in his, but the fingers have already started lengthening; he presses them as though to force them to stay human by will alone.

“Valjean,” Javert warns, voice low and urgent. The woman bows deeper, forehead almost touching the floor, and the jut of each vertebra protrudes through her vestments.

“Wait,” he pleads desperately – more time, more time, he always needs more _time—_

“Valjean!”

The Vicar throws her head back and howls, and for a split second Valjean’s field of vision is filled with white fur and razor teeth, and then she’s struck him square in the chest. He’s sent flying back, and when he lands his head hits the flagstone floor hard enough that he blacks out.

He comes to moments later, but it’s already nearly too late. Javert is facing the beast alone, and he can see, even though his vision is swimming, that the floor is slick and dark with blood. Horror seizes him by the throat. He forces himself to rise, hands grasping for purchase on the flagstone; he finds a blood vial and wills his hands to stop trembling long enough to inject it. As soon as he does his head stops spinning, and he joins them in the nick of time, parrying a blow that would likely have ripped Javert open from collar to hipbone.

It’s a protracted, brutal fight, but at least they both manage to make it out alive.

“I told you,” Javert says, drawing a juddering breath, eyes bright and wild as the beast’s corpse turns to ash between them. “I _told_ you.”

Valjean bows his head. He starts to mouth a soundless prayer for the woman’s soul, but it feels like a mockery, so he says nothing instead. Why, he wonders, do clerics seem to make the most horrifying beasts?

  
  
  


It takes Javert some time to notice Valjean’s despondency after they slay the Vicar. The man guards his feelings jealously; his earlier outburst was the first true display of emotion he’s seen from Valjean since that fateful night at the hospital. Truth be told, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen any true emotion but anger from Valjean. Wariness, perhaps. He’s not fool enough to think his careful smiles from Montreuil-sur-Mer count.

It takes him even more time to decide whether to say anything about it. In the first place, he has never been one for sentiment. He’s spent his entire life unbowed and unyielding, caring only for justice and order; his emotions, when they are roused at all, have washed over him like waves on an empty beach. Present and then gone, and ultimately of no consideration. Furthermore, he and Valjean have not the least bit in common, beyond the years spent on opposite sides of a set of prison bars, and even Javert is emotionally astute enough to realise that’s likely to hinder more than it helps.

But the night grows ever darker, and the beasts in their path ever more dangerous, and the gloom into which Valjean has sunk is at last undeniable. It will do no good, he thinks, if his low spirits make him slow and get him – or both of them – killed.

Their journey is to take them into the woods, but they double back to Odeon Chapel first. Accompanying a prostitute to safety, at Valjean’s insistence. Javert would not have bothered beyond perhaps telling her where it lies, but that is simply one more way in which they differ. 

He debates striking out on his own, but finds himself following Valjean’s lead instead. Despite his impatience they’re hardly pressed for time, and he has to admit, grudgingly, that Valjean’s presence is useful. He hasn’t died once since they began working together. 

Besides, if he _did_ leave, and then died and had to return from the Dream, and Valjean caught up with him, the mortification would likely accomplish what any number of beasts have not and kill him permanently. 

So Javert stays. He stays, and tries to think of some way of questioning Valjean that will not raise his hackles, and end with them at each other’s throats.

“Something troubles you,” he says at last, when they have a moment to rest. They’re sitting on the chapel’s front steps, and Valjean’s gaze is a million miles away. For a moment it doesn’t look like he’s even heard him. Then a shudder runs through him, and he hangs his head. A thin sliver of the nape of his neck is visible between his hair and the collar of his coat.

“It was easy. It was too easy.” His voice is quiet, and he has all the air of someone admitting something terrible. Javert frowns.

“What was easy?” He’s hard-pressed to think of a single thing he’d call _easy_ since he came to this town.

“To kill that poor woman, when she was a danger to you. It’s never been _easy_ before. How could I—” Valjean looks up at him, despair plain in the lines of his face.

Oh. _Oh._

If he’d been standing, the answer might have knocked him flat. It’s as though the shell Valjean keeps around himself has been cracked open, allowing Javert to glimpse the raw, trembling thing beneath. His mouth is suddenly dry; a strange sort of pain lances through his chest, and Javert trembles in turn.

For the first time, he feels as though he understands something of Valjean. He _fears,_ this man; but he does not fear not the beasts, and does not fear what unknown horrors may lurk in the darkness. If anything, what Valjean fears is himself, and what he might do. What he’s capable of doing. 

Lord above, Javert has no idea how to even begin to find the right words. He doubts the truth – that he’s glad Valjean found it easy to intercede, for he ill fancied dying an eighth time – will help matters any. He takes a deep breath and removes his gloves; his hands, under them, seem almost too clean. He lays one of them wordlessly on Valjean’s wrist, feeling the pulse fluttering under his fingertips like the wings of a bird.

Valjean looks at him, wondering, but he says nothing, and Javert does not explain himself. For the first time, the silence between them is comfortable rather than tense.

  
  
  


Valjean finds he dislikes this forest intensely.

He once lived in the countryside, and made a living pruning trees, guiding their branches into graceful shapes, coaxing them to bloom in the spring. But here as with everywhere else in Yharnam, everything feels subtly left of centre. These trees seem almost to watch them, standing stark and hostile; their twisting forms make shadows dance at the corners of his eyes, making him jump at nothing. The buildings out here are hovels, dilapidated and overgrown, and the forest devours them eagerly. These trees would be far more likely to tear at his skin than bend under his hand, he thinks.

“Hold.” Javert’s voice pulls him from his reverie.

There’s a sound coming from around the corner – snuffling, scraping, and then the clear sound of a human exhale. Valjean meets Javert’s eyes and they edge around it as one, hands on their weapons.

The man is hunched over a mass of splintered bone and ragged flesh – the remains of two others, though Valjean realises the remains are such a mess he can’t actually tell if it’s two, or three. More than one, at least. He starts as they round the corner, the sounds of their footsteps disturbing him for all they’d tried to keep quiet. He spins on the balls of his feet, mouth agape –

“Blimey!” The alarm flees from his face and is replaced by a smile. “Gave me quite a scare, so you did. S’not polite, sneaking up on a body like that. On a night like this… I almost took the two of you for monsters!”

Later, as with the Vicar, Valjean will ask himself if there was something more he could have done; if things could have turned out differently, if he’d only done _better_ . But he’s so overjoyed to find another man who speaks instead of mindlessly attacking that he doesn’t see the dark, rusty red mingling with the grime on the man’s fingers, doesn’t find anything odd with the too-soft curve of his smile as he asks them if they know of a safe haven. He steps forward to help him up, the words _Odeon Chapel_ already forming on his lips – only to find Javert’s put a hand on his chest, halting his steps. 

“Wait.” He tilts his chin at the bloody mess behind the crouching beggar. “What happened to them?”

“Wh—oh, oh them,” the man stammers, glancing behind him. “T’was that awful beast down there, so it was. The thing had me trembling in my boots, and then you two came along—”

“Strange,” Javert says, “that it should kill them and leave you untouched.”

The man hunches, and the familiarity of the posture finally sends alarm bells ringing in Valjean’s head.

“W–well, I’m sure it would have—”

“Had you not killed them first,” Javert cuts him off.

There’s a moment of terrible silence – and then the beggar howls as dark fur sprouts from too-long arms, as bones crack and bloodstained fingers stretch and curl. The rooftop is narrow, and the beast’s claws arc bright and sharp and lightning-fast, and it takes every ounce of their collective skill to avoid the frenzied blows without tumbling off the edge, as the creature thrashes and spits vituperations at them.

“You drink the blood of half the town and call _me_ a beast?” it accuses, swiping at them. “ _Me?”_

“Beast or man, it does not matter,” Javert snarls, jumping back. “You are a _murderer.”_ His shoulder hits the wall, but Valjean darts forward to harry its flank before it can take advantage of the fact it’s backed Javert into a corner. Thus they wear it down, wound on bloody wound, until it falls. At the last, the whimper it lets out sounds human again.

“How did you know?” Valjean asks, once the beast is dead. If it truly was a beast, and not a man wearing a beast’s form. It conserved the capacity for speech even after transforming, something he’s never seen before.

Madmen who walk upright but slaughter their fellows, beasts who crawl on all fours but speak with human tongue – the differences feel paper-thin now, worn down like old cloth.

“You didn’t realise?” Javert smiles, breathing heavily. Valjean tells himself the gleam in his eyes is just the moonlight; that what he sees is merely a trick of the shadows, and Javert’s canines have not lengthened. “The stench of blood was all over him.”

  
  
  


Everything in Javert’s life has followed this pattern: a slow and steady rise, followed by a short, sharp fall. Working his way to the rank of Inspector only to find he’d been assigned to a backwater town of no more than a few hundred people. Building his case against _Monsieur le Maire_ with care and dedication only to have his superiors dismiss him out of hand. Never mind that he had been vindicated in the end. Valjean was the one to change their minds; Javert’s merits alone were not enough. They have never been enough. It is ever thus.

Why should this time be any different?

When it happens, it happens all at once. He doesn’t realise that his breath has been coming sharp and shallow since their encounter with the beggar, that his teeth are almost fangs. When a dog bursts out of the undergrowth into his path, he kills it on instinct. The sweet stench of its blood fills the air, heady like perfume. He strikes the corpse again just to release more of it, breathes in deep. Someone is speaking, far away, but he pays no attention.

“—vert! Javert!”

Hands like claws on his shoulders; he snarls, swiping at this new enemy as he turns, eyes full of fire. The beast with the white hair springs back, and Javert staggers forward, following it, seeking it. There will be more blood when he kills it, when he tears open its chest and unfolds its ribs like a flower—

He freezes, and the fog that has blocked out his mind recedes, a single moment of clarity illuminating him like the moon shining through the clouds.

“Valjean,” he whispers, horrified.

His saw cleaver drops from nerveless fingers; he stumbles back and falls heavily to the ground. Valjean follows him and he scrambles away. He looks like a monster – like a man – like a – he can’t tell anymore, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t _know—_

His back hits something solid, cutting off his escape.

“Valjean.” It takes effort even to speak, now; his tongue feels all wrong for the shape of his mouth. He draws his knees to his chest. _“Run.”_

There’s a presence by his side, then warmth: Valjean has taken his hands in his own. He’s close, he’s so close, vein and tendon and soft, pale skin. Javert can smell his blood already. The urge to seize and to devour rushes over him like a tidal wave, threatening to drag him under; he pants and shivers and uses every last bit of his slipping willpower to still himself. He cannot, he _cannot._ He clings to the gentle warmth of Valjean’s hands, focuses on that point of contact like it’s the tether that keeps the very idea of _Javert_ from being unmoored in a sea of madness, and sinking into the depths. The single star guiding him through the darkness back to safe harbor.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, his breathing slows, and returns to normal.

He gives one last shudder, and then the final dregs of bloodlust drip away, and he returns fully to himself. His body feels heavy. Somehow, his head has ended up nestled in the crook of Valjean’s neck; the scent of him fills his lungs. It sparks a different sort of hunger in him then, one that flares for only a moment before settling to smoulder gently at his core, almost so slight as to be dismissed.

“Valjean,” he murmurs once more, lifting his head, and the man smiles, warm hazel eyes locking with his.

“Here I am.”

  
  
  


Something changes in Javert, after that. Valjean sees it in the tilt of his head, in the slope of his shoulders. Before, he’d slain beasts with all the satisfaction of the hound that closes its jaws around the jackal’s neck, but that’s fled from him entirely now. He finds himself worried for his – his what? His would-be-jailer, erstwhile pursuer, reluctant companion?

None of these feel quite right. None of them fit quite as they should with the odd feeling that has been budding for some time in Valjean’s chest, this quiet concern for Javert that he now carries with him.

But he knows the man’s lived his entire life stiff-backed, made a point of appearing untouched by weather or circumstance, with all the malleability of a rock. He likely wouldn’t appreciate inquiries as to his health – and he’s still on two feet, despite everything, after all. So if his gaze seems slightly haunted, if his hand trembles occasionally as he raises his saw cleaver? Valjean sees it, and says nothing. Slowly the lingering tremors cease, and Javert appears to regain some measure of confidence, if not his previous ferocity. Valjean steps in wordlessly to pick up the slack, to shield Javert from blows where he can, and strike when he cannot.

The first time he’d killed a beast to protect Javert, he’d nearly lost himself to despair. Now? Now he remembers the warmth of Javert’s hand when he’d laid it on his wrist, and—

 _—pitié, Seigneur, pitié—_

—he finds he cannot regret the blood on his own hands anymore.

The beasts of Byrgenwerth seem all the more monstrous when contrasted with the beauty of the lake it lies upon. Distended heads and far, _far_ too many milk-white, bulging eyes. As Valjean kills one, a chitinous limb lands on his shoulder, and he brushes it off with a distasteful shudder. What has happened in this academy, to transform its inhabitants so?

“I don’t trust him,” Javert says suddenly, as they slip into the shadowy halls. Valjean starts at the unexpectedness of the sound, more than anything else, and he glances at Javert curiously.

“Gehrman,” he clarifies. “The old man who sits in the Dream.”

“I remember,” Valjean replies, thinking back to the single time he awoke in the Hunter’s Dream. It unnerved him so profoundly he’s never returned, preferring to walk rather than use the lanterns to transport himself.

 _Go out and kill a few beasts,_ the old Hunter had said, something almost like laughter in his voice. _It’s for your own good._

“Give some thought to the Hunt,” he murmurs to himself.

“Hm?”

“He told me to go out and kill the beasts.”

“He said much the same to me,” Javert sneers. “Fool that I am, I listened.”

“Do you think he knows they were people?” Valjean asks, wishing he didn’t already know the answer. Still, hearing it from Javert’s lips lessens the blow, somehow.

“He can’t not. He’s been here far longer than you or I.”

A thought occurs to Valjean then, and he glances at the moon, framed by one of the tall windows. It hangs like a pendulum frozen in mid-swing, there in the night sky, a giant eye watching over them.

“How long _have_ we been here?”

Javert frowns. “... Less than a full night; the moon is still up. A few hours?”

“It feels...” He bites his lip. The hours grow hazy, and he’s lost all count of them, but surely, surely – “It feels longer than that.”

The old man out on the lunarium sits unmoving, swaddled in robes, so frail that for the first few moments Valjean thinks it’s just one more corpse. As they draw close, he sees the slight rise and fall of his chest. He’s blind, eyes covered by an elaborate headdress, but he stares up at the moon as though he can see it regardless. Valjean lays a soft hand on his shoulder, and the man’s mouth opens; a gasping, sickly sound emerges. Whispers flicker at the edges of Valjean’s mind. A premonition of what comes next.

The old man raises his staff in one quivering hand and points it at the edge. At the moon. At the lake.

Javert is already moving towards it.

“There’s something down there.” He has one foot half over the edge as he leans over to look, not seeming to care at all about the precipitous drop. The moon’s reflection shines stark on the rippling water. 

Valjean lays a hand on his arm, but not to hold him back. _I’m here,_ he thinks again. He catches Javert’s gaze, and he can see the grim determination in it. He nods.

They take the plunge.

  
  
  


When Valjean dies, Javert is surprised to find he’s not ready for it.

One of the spiders with legs like scythes; a moment of carelessness, an unlucky blow, that’s all it takes. Javert sees it happen, and he’s tasted enough of death to know which wounds are fatal at a glance. Valjean staggers, then collapses like a puppet with cut strings. Red spreads through the water around him.

Javert bites down on the cry that threatens to burst out of him, forces it back down into his chest with gritted teeth. They’ve already finished off the last of their blood vials; there’s nothing he can do for him.

Except this.

He finishes the hideous spider off by himself, fury fueling his blows and quickening his steps as he weaves through the swarm to strike true. The saw cleaver leaves deep scores in its bulbous body, blood and ichor and glowing white spores in the air. This time the blood doesn’t sing to him. This time he feels nothing but disgust.

He rushes back to Valjean as soon as the thing is dust, slipping one hand under his shoulders, hauling him into his lap. He’s still alive – barely. The palms of Javert’s gloves come away shining with blood. Valjean draws in a pained breath as Javert moves him, and it makes a wet, gurgling sound.

“The—” he struggles to say around the gaping wound in his chest. One hand grasps weakly at Javert’s coat.

“Shh,” he says helplessly, knowing it won’t make a difference. It’s his fault. This is all his fault. He was too hesitant, too afraid of falling prey to the madness again, and now Valjean’s paid the price.

“Th—the Dream—” Valjean chokes on his own blood as it bubbles up from his lips. “Find—”

Javert knows instantly what he means. The Hunter’s Dream; when Valjean dies, he will surely reawaken there. One hand finds Valjean’s cheek, stilling him. It leaves a smear of dark red against the pallor of his skin.

“I understand.” He’s bowed over Valjean now, foreheads almost touching. “I’ll find you. I swear it.”

“Good,” Valjean breathes. “Good.” Then the rattle of his laborious breathing stops, and the light leaves his eyes. For a moment all is still and silent – then his body crumbles in Javert’s arms, and he’s gone.

Javert hunches in on himself. There’s a tremor in his shoulders he can’t explain; his hands curl and uncurl almost by themselves, grasping at nothing.

 _He’s not dead,_ he thinks. _He’s not dead. He will come back._ Far off, like an echo, he can hear crying – a child. A baby. Numbly, he staggers to his feet.

The blood moon rises.

  
  
  


Valjean reappears at the Odeon Chapel lantern and draws a shaking breath. He almost forgot the cold returning from the Dream leaves in his bones, the subtle feeling of not-quite-there before everything solidifies.

He wouldn’t have come here on his own at all, but there’s no other way. They hadn’t accounted for this situation. If he waits, if he remains here – surely, everything will be alright.

“Oh, it’s good to see you again!” the chapel dweller greets him, and he smiles despite the circumstances. It’s heartening to see they’re still safe and sound here. “Your friend passed by here just now,” he continues with a servile smile. Valjean’s heart leaps in his chest. 

“Friend?” he echoes. Already passed through? Then—

“Yes, er – with the crow’s beak. Seemed to have some business at the Cathedral, so she said.”

Oh. He realises with an odd pang the chapel dweller is talking about Eileen, not Javert. Then he should stay, should remain and wait for Javert to appear; and he will, sooner or later, Valjean is sure of that.. And yet – and yet. He remembers the Crow’s dreadful business. Not the Hunt, but the Hunters themselves, maddened, blood-drunk.

But should he not stay? They are already adrift from each other; if he does this – if he leaves – what if Javert fails to realise where he’s gone? He starts pacing across the length of the chapel, a fearful dread weighing on his heart. What if they cannot find each other? What if he never sees him again? Has he not done enough, already, does he not deserve this one respite?

Some small and straining part of him realises his fears are irrational – they’ve found each other before, three times, and that was when he was actively trying to avoid Javert. What are the odds, truly, that they’d miss each other completely now? But the fear has always eaten away at him, gnawed like a living thing, devouring sense and reason. He hadn’t realised just how much Javert’s very presence helped drive fear away, solid and immovable at his side. 

Now he is alone. Just him, and the endless possibility stretching before him, terrible in its vastness. Even if they never find each other again – no. No, that’s the wrong question. The right one is this: even if he waits patiently for Javert to reappear, if the worst should happen to Eileen as he does so, could he ever forgive himself? Can he remain, knowing his complacency might damn another to oblivion? Valjean exhales, trembling, and closes his eyes for a moment.

Then he opens them, and sets off in the direction of the Great Cathedral.

  


Javert uses the lantern to return to the Dream, expecting to see Valjean on the other side, but he doesn’t find him. Instead, what he finds is that things are not so simple.

Valjean is not there, and so he settles against the rock wall, waiting for him to reappear. _He is not gone,_ he thinks to himself. Perhaps it simply takes some time to return after dying. Not that he would know; it always seemed instant to him, though he concedes it’s difficult to keep time when one is dead. So he waits. And still, Valjean is not there. He is not there. Javert’s frustration mounts, but he doesn’t trust Gehrman – doesn’t trust any of it, this too-quiet oasis amidst the madness. At last, he turns to the Doll.

“How long does it take to return from death?” he asks.

She bows her head. “It is instantaneous.”

The answer arrests him. Instantaneous? Then where is Valjean?

“That cannot be,” he rebuts reflexively, looking around – as though Valjean were simply hiding behind one of the headstones, awaiting discovery. “He would be – he should be here.”

“Oh, brave Hunter,” sighs the Doll. “You will not find another here. Each Hunter dreams their own Dream.”

_… Merde._

They hadn’t thought of this. They hadn’t planned for this eventuality. He begins to pace, attempting to wrestle his thoughts into order. Reasoning is still – hard; his mind feels sometimes like a tangle of snakes, liable to lash out at any second. 

But following Valjean is so deeply ingrained in him it’s practically an instinct of his own, by now. He breathes deep: where would Valjean go? If indeed he has realised like he has that they cannot meet in the Dream. Somewhere safe. Somewhere he could wait. Odeon Chapel, most like; it’s the safest of anywhere they’ve been.

He nods to himself, having reached a decision, and reaches for the headstone.

… If they each dream a separate Dream, he wonders, fingers halting an inch from the stone, why does Gehrman appear to both of them? He glances up at the workshop – but no, he hasn’t the time to follow that thread wherever it may lead. Besides, as he told Valjean, he does not trust the old man. If he goes up there he likely won’t be able to resist confronting him, demanding answers about the Hunt – and instinct whispers that this, too, would be a _bad_ idea.

He lays his hand on the headstone and leaves the Dream.

  
  
  


He was nearly too late – again, as he has been his whole life. Too late to rescue his sister’s children, too late to save Fantine, too late, too late.

Eileen is almost dead by the time he intercedes.

“Run!” he tells her. Then his field of view is filled by crow feathers and a cutting blade.

  


A woman is slumped against the banister on the Cathedral steps. There’s blood smeared all around her, nearly pitch-black and still glistening – though it doesn’t look like she’s bleeding at the moment. With a frisson of shock, Javert recognises her as Eileen the Crow.

They’d met some time ago, at Odeon Chapel, though Valjean’s acquaintance stretched back somewhat further. They’d helped her put down a blood-mad Hunter, there among the headstones. A good place to die, he’d thought at the time – not far to go. That had been as much consideration as he’d been willing to give the matter.

He’d been fool enough to think the madness would not touch him, back then.

Eileen looks up at him as he mounts the steps, and her eyes lack the bright glint of madness. Sane, then.

“What happened?” he asks, kneeling beside her to make sure she isn’t bleeding out from somewhere.

“I’m getting too old for this, is what happened.” She snorts bitterly, then mutters, so low Javert struggles to catch it: “He saved me.”

His heart jumps. “He – Valjean?” he asks, and she nods up at the Cathedral.

He’s moving before he knows it, not even bothering with goodbyes, sprinting up the remaining steps two at a time; he throws open the Cathedral doors and rushes up to the nave—

Valjean is standing before the altar, weapon in hand; it’s covered to the hilt in blood. Up his arms, over his cloak, everywhere. The stench of it rolls over him like a wave, heady, cloying; bile rises in the back of his throat. For one heartstopping moment, he’s certain Valjean has gone mad, that he’s been taken by the same curse that’s ravaged the rest of this godforsaken city.

Valjean turns, and sees him, and gives him a relieved smile. The knot of tension in Javert’s chest loosens, and he breathes again.

“You made it,” Valjean says. “I was worried.”

Javert strides down the nave and throws his arms around Valjean, clutching him to his chest; Valjean lets out a surprised grunt at the sudden contact, and his weapon clatters to the floor. It’s no gentle thing: his grip is too tight, and his hands fist white-knuckled in the fabric of Valjean’s coat - but surely that is fitting. Nothing in this city is gentle; nothing, of course, save for Valjean, and the solid warmth of his living, breathing body, and the way his arms slowly rise to encircle Javert in turn. The way he returns the embrace.

He holds Valjean against him for a moment more, memorising the rise and fall of his chest, before he at last withdraws and moves his hands to Valjean’s shoulders.

“Do not _ever,”_ he says hoarsely, “do that again.”

“Javert,” Valjean breathes, wondering, and it’s—

There’s salt on his lips.

With a start, Javert becomes aware of the taste, of the wet spilling down his cheek; he’s crying. He hasn’t cried since he was a boy.

Valjean lifts a hand to his jaw and brushes a thumb across his cheek, wiping away a tear. His eyes are wide and warm and impossibly inviting. Javert’s breath catches – Valjean’s thumb presses harder against his cheekbone – and the fire that has been slumbering deep inside him flares to life, sparks at the back of his throat, swiftly chased by fear. He refuses to be rough, not here, not in this. He doesn’t know how to be soft. The best thing would be to step away before he does something both of them will regret, but he finds himself rooted to the spot.

Valjean lays his other hand on Javert’s chest, and he feels it like a brand through his clothes.

“Valjean,” he tries, half warning, half pleading. Instead of retreating Valjean steps closer, and the hand on Javert’s cheek moves to the back of his collar – he’s so _close_ now, so close Javert can feel his breath ghost against his lips.

The last of his resolve crumbles and washes away like sand in the surf.

He sinks a hand into Valjean’s snow-white curls and kisses him, presses his lips against Valjean’s with an urgency he hardly understands and has no words for – it is pure feeling, some wild instinct that carries with it the weight of their history together, years of suspicious glances and swallowed words and sleepless nights.

Valjean breathes in sharply and then one hand is clutching at Javert’s coat, the other knocking his hat to the flagstones as he kisses him back. Javert steps forward unconsciously, backing Valjean up until he hits the altar with a grunt that Javert swallows with his mouth. He braces one hand on the cold stone, the other still tangled in Valjean’s hair, pulling him up and against him.

“I don’t know,” Valjean says when at last they separate, dazed and breathing heavily. “For a greeting like that, I might be tempted to die more often.” The corner of his mouth quirks upward.

Javert decides he prefers it, on the whole, when Valjean is _not_ attempting to be witty, and so he takes steps to correct the situation.

It is some time before they manage to leave the Great Cathedral.

  


More has changed than just the moon, which now hangs fat and red in the sky like an overripe fruit.

“Tell me,” Javert says at his side, sounding a touch desperate, “that you see them, too.”

Valjean stares at the enormous creatures, all jointed limbs and tendrils and terrible, eyeless, pitted heads. They cling to the sides of the buildings like wretched parasites.

“Yes,” he says, strangled. “Thank goodness I’m not the only one. If we are mad –” he glances at Javert – “then we are mad together.”

He finds he can think of worse fates than that.

“Ah, Kos – or as some say, Kosm,” the man murmurs. His voice is quiet and yet it echoes, giving Javert the subtly unnerving sensation of someone whispering just behind his ear.

The man might not have a beastly form, but when he turns to look at them, his smile is deranged. The mad light in his eyes is unmistakable. 

Valjean opens his eyes and shudders, and knows he is not in Yharnam. Where this certainty comes from, he can’t say – perhaps it settled into his bones while he was still unconscious. Something thrums within him, a finger dragged along the rim of a glass. He ignores it.

He cranes his head to look at his surroundings and, with a rush of relief, spots Javert slumped against a wall not far from where he’s lying. There’s a blessing he didn’t expect: that towering monstrosity had grabbed them both too quickly to react, enormous fingers wrapping around them like iron bands. He’d expected to reawaken in the Hunter’s Dream again. Wherever this is, it is plainly _not_ the Dream. 

He pushes himself to his knees, and when that goes more or less smoothly, climbs to his feet and staggers over to crouch at Javert’s side. He shakes his shoulder gently, and Javert frowns at the touch, brows drawing together as he blinks awake. 

“Where are we?” he asks groggily.

“I’m – not sure,” Valjean admits.

“It’s not the city.”

“No.”

He looks around at the hall they’re in as he sticks out a hand to help Javert to his feet. It looks almost like Odeon Chapel, but the details are all off in subtle ways; too many banners, walls and columns slightly shifted. The light that filters in is too bright to be the moon. No, they are not in Yharnam – but then, they’re not _out_ of it, either, not truly. Everything feels all pale and washed out; the air feels too thin to fill his lungs properly. A white reflection to the city’s dark water. A bad dream. A Nightmare.

“There’s a lantern here. We should leave,” he says, as Javert paces the length of the hall, gaze sharp and inquisitive. The hairs on the Valjean’s neck are standing on end just from being here; some subtle and deep-running sense of wrongness clings to this place like cobwebs. It’s different from the clanging, discordant sense of wrong he’s become used to feeling from the city. It runs deeper, tastes of ash and regret.

“There is something here,” Javert says, face turned up like a wolf that catches a scent. “Something is calling. Do you feel it?

Of course he can feel it. He feels it as much as Javert must; it’s simply that he doesn’t _want_ to. He wants to leave, but leaving without Javert is no longer an option for him. He swallows, throat scratchy and dry. _Wrong,_ a voice screeches inside Valjean, beating itself against the inside of his ribcage. _Wrong, wrong, wrong –_

“What do you hope to find here?” he asks helplessly.

“Answers.”

He’s left staring at Javert’s straight-backed posture as he throws open the doors and steps into the unknown. For the first time in his life, Javert leads, and Valjean must decide whether to chase.

He shakes his head and laughs too quietly for anyone to hear, and then he follows.

He should have known it wouldn’t be dead. Nothing here is as dead as it should be, as it seems to be at first glance.

He jumps back with a curse, a shower of embers falling at his feet; one catches the hem of his coat for a moment before it burns out, leaving a black smudge behind. The beast is burning from within with a terrible, scorching light. It howls, and even Javert can tell it is in agony.

His eyes find Valjean at the other side of the room, separated from him by fire and swiping claws; the other man nods minutely. Together, they face this new foe.

They step into the room at the top of the Astral Clock Tower, and the call becomes so strong it practically sings in Valjean’s veins. He doesn’t think he could ignore it now even if he tried. Beside him, Javert draws a breath, and he knows he feels it too. It’s like a chain that loops around both of them and pulls them inexorably towards the clock face, with its cryptic runes, through which silver moonlight streams.

Towards the Hunter corpse sitting in the chair, feet and arms elegantly crossed, hat pulled low.

This corpse – like all the others – is not as dead as it appears. It speaks to them of secrets that should be left undisturbed, and Valjean cannot help but agree. He doesn’t know what they’re doing here, what they’ve done, what their actions might mean. He knows they’ll mean _something,_ when all is said and done. He fears to discover what.

He’d just as soon leave, put this place behind him, forget all about it – but he can’t. It’s too late for that; the call is too strong. He knows it. And the Hunter knows it too, for her body levers itself out of her chair, fingers curled around her weapon.

“Only an honest death will cure you now,” she says, lips curving gently upward.

Too late by far.

At last, Javert has found the answers he so craved. This time, however, he can take no satisfaction from the moment of reveal, from the act of uncovering. He’s always thought of himself as an unfeeling man – not with pride, but as a simple fact – but this sickens even him.

The Hunters massacred the inhabitants of this humble fishing village. It’s not so hard to piece together, after all. The bloodstains on the walls, rusty black with age; the hollowed-out husks that remain of the villagers; the feverish whispering behind every door – all of it points to this one inescapable conclusion.

The slosh of water around his ankles and the smell of brine and rust in the air heighten his disgust, but they’re not the true culprits – no. This village is like seeing all his deficiencies writ large, seeing what he might have become, given time and the right circumstances. What he might have become had Valjean not turned him on a different path, with so gentle a touch he hadn’t even realised until he was halfway down it, as easy as breathing. For surely the Hunters thought they had been in the right, even as they visited horrors on the innocents in their path. They’d been after something, something important.

Something that calls like a siren even now, every step they take leading them inexorably closer to the shoreline.

Finally the houses fall away, and they stand before a long, muddy beach and the open, endless sea. 

Slowly they approach the white, blubbery shape at the water’s edge. It lies, unmoving, and Javert knows it to be dead. The taste of regret pools at the back of his tongue like backflow. The weight of the call is so heavy on his shoulders he almost buckles; his entire being vibrates like a plucked string in response. Beside him, Valjean shifts uncomfortably. This, _this_ is what they’ve been searching for all this time without even realising it. This is Kos.

Something moves beneath the folds of the Great One’s corpse.

A shriveled hand drags itself across the mud, and then a skull-like head follows, sunken eyes rising to the mid-light of the false sun. It is monstrous.

“It is a child,” Valjean breathes beside him.

 _“What?”_ Surely he can’t be serious. Javert shoots him a glance, but his face is grave. His lips are pale, and his eyes red-rimmed; he looks almost on the verge of tears.

“Mercy for the wizened child,” Valjean says, echoing the villager near the lantern. “The Orphan of Kos. _Mercy.”_ He steps forward; Javert sucks in a breath.

“Valjean,” he starts, but the other man holds up a hand, silencing him.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, even as the thing staggers to its feet. Javert tightens his grip on the handle of the saw cleaver, waiting for the battle to begin. The sea itself seems to pause in anticipation.

“I promise you we mean no harm,” Valjean continues. He stretches out a hand, and –

The Orphan strikes out with the fleshy, club-like mass it drags behind it, a wide arc that stops Valjean in his tracks, spraying him with mud and seawater, and it wails, full of grief and terror and sharp as a knife. Javert draws his weapon, swapping to its extended form with a loud clack. The Orphan turns its baleful gaze on him, eyes like twin pits, but Valjean steps between them, still stubbornly unarmed and open-handed – stopping the Orphan from harming him, or him from harming the Orphan, he can’t tell for sure. Likely both.

“It’s all right,” Valjean says again, and he stretches his hand out once more, palm up, and takes a single, careful step. Javert forces himself to stay still, even as instinct screams at him to pull Valjean away, to safety. Valjean takes another step.

The Orphan shrinks back as Valjean’s fingertips brush its forehead. This… this half-formed child of a Great One seems almost to collapse in on itself under the weight of this gentle touch. Withered skin becomes smooth, claws crack and recede and become fingers; gossamer wings fold into its skin.

“There,” Valjean murmurs at last to this thing that now appears, incredibly, just sideways of being human. He runs a hand over its hair. “There.”

Javert lets out a single breath. God above, but he would not have thought it possible if Valjean hadn’t done the same to him already. _Mercy,_ he thinks. Of course Valjean’s mercy could tame the spawn of an old god. Of course.

He looks up at Javert, the thing nestled fully in his arms by now. “She has no mother; we cannot leave her here.”

Javert raises an eyebrow. _She?_

“You mean to take it with us? And what will you call it?” he snorts. “Kosette?”

Valjean directs a mild look at him, and rises to his feet. The infant Great One is barely larger than a human child now, and he carries her easily.

“Cosette _is_ a lovely name, though,” he says thoughtfully, as they leave the sea and the wretched fishing village behind.

The Hunter’s Dream is burning.

Valjean draws a breath that tastes of cinder. Cosette is still in his arms; by his side, something moving catches his eye – Javert stands before the headstone.

“How is this possible?” Valjean asks, eyes wide. For the Doll had said each Hunter’s Dream was unique. Javert reaches towards him, brow furrowed, one hand landing warm and heavy on Valjean’s arm. It feels real. They’re both here.

“Papa,” says Cosette, small hands bunched in his scarf. “I pulled them together, Papa,” she smiles, too-pale eyes gleaming. Then, slowly, she turns her gaze to the moon, and Valjean follows, and – the knowledge drops like a stone into the pool of his mind. Yes, of course – the moon. Always there, always watching. Guiding the Hunters in the eternal night. How long have they been serving another’s whims without realising it?

“Stay here,” he says, depositing her on the low stone wall.

“The gate to the garden is open,” Javert murmurs. “It’s never been open before.” Their eyes meet, and he sees an odd sort of certainty in Javert’s expression, too.

There is a dread pooling in his veins, in the pit of his stomach; it’s the same feeling as the moment before he stepped into the courthouse in Arras. One way or another, he knows, their journey ends here.

Therefore, he’s unsurprised when Gehrman asks them to lay down their weapons, and their lives, all for the promise of waking to see another dawn. If things had been different, he might have acceded. But that was when escaping Yharnam was his highest priority. That was before Cosette.

He will not leave her behind.

Gehrman proves a powerful enemy, but he’s nothing compared to what follows. A true Great One – not an infant, or a remnant, or some failed replica. It turns a sightless face on them and Valjean feels its focus settle on him like the crushing abyss, a thousand times more powerful than the call in the Nightmare. He staggers and falls to one knee, and beside him Javert doubles over, the proud line of his spine bent under the weight of the Great One’s will. God help him, he is powerless to resist. He –

“Papa!” A voice like a lark cuts through the fog. The pressure on Valjean’s shoulders lifts, and he breathes again. Cosette is standing in the garden, barely taller than the swaying white flowers surrounding her.

“Papa,” she says again, and her eyes almost seem to glow. “Fight.”

Valjean gives himself over to this will easily, wholeheartedly, wears it like armor as he stands upright. Javert straightens, and they share one final glance. He nods.

The fire is all-consuming, now; he can no longer see the outline of the Workshop. At his feet lies the corpse of the Great One. What now? Javert asks himself. Perhaps they will burn along with the Dream. Perhaps this was all a dream in the first place.

He lays a hand on Valjean’s cheek, mindful of the infant Great One in his arms once more.

“Valjean, whatever happens,” he says, suddenly urgent, mindful of the flickering flames licking at their boot heels. “I do not regret this. Us. I am –” the words stick in his throat, and so he presses his lips to Valjean’s instead. Valjean makes a sound deep in his throat and kisses him back desperately, as the world turns to flame around them.

Two men awaken to a bright, red dawn. Between them, a child lies sleeping, all pale smooth skin and golden hair gleaming in the new sun. Around them the city is quiet and still, and they leave it without anyone being the wiser. Together, they start a new life, far away.

They raise the infant Cosette between them; one father teaches gentleness and mercy, the other diligence and honesty. Each privately believes she gains far more from what the other man offers her – and they are both wrong, for a half is never as great as the whole. Cosette grows in vivacity and happiness with every passing day, though her eyes never lose their knowing gleam. Through it all, the three remain together.

And if these two men seem sometimes to carry experience even beyond their years? If they move with greater speed and show greater strength than they ought, if their daughter sometimes smiles so brightly she almost seems to glow from within, then, well – that’s nobody’s business but their own.


End file.
